School is right around the corner...

Yes. It’s that time of year again. Time for all the little kiddies to come out of their nooks and crannies and swarm the school. Swarm like hornets or wasps or some other kind of poisonous creepy-crawly. And then all the teachers come trudging to school. Heads to the ground, dragging their feet in the dirt. It’s inevitable. Has to happen once a year and the time is at hand. Guess all there is to do is brace yourself for the blow then let it come. It’ll settle down soon and then it’ll be smooth sailin’ until the end of the year.

This year I’ve switched things up a bit which I’m happy about. Last year, for the most part, wasn’t fun. It was like working in a dentist’s office. Apology to all the dentists. If you see my point, pulling teeth and such. Or: trying to get kids to speak English. That seems to be teachers’ problem, at least Peace Corps teachers, all over Kyrgyzstan. The Soviet System did not encourage speaking English, in some cases it even punished it. When the Soviets left, everything was supposed to be fine and dandy, educationally speaking, but the teachers that learned the Soviet way continued to teach in the Soviet way. Then we should just wait for Soviet teachers to stop teaching and then all will be fine and dandy, right? Well, it doesn’t happen that way. Looks good on paper; like the Soviet system. While the old Soviet teachers were fizzling out they taught up and coming teachers how to teach. You teach what you know, right? Well, they taught the Soviet system. With the Soviet teachers gone the new teachers started to teach in their neo-Soviet style which placed about as much emphasis on speaking as the Soviet teacher’s method. I say ‘about’ because the influence of Americans, like myself, in Kyrgyzstan’s schools had started to change the method of teaching ever so slightly to incorporate more emphasis on speaking and speaking through real life experiences and activities. When I’ve gone home, the Peace Corps will hopefully put another volunteer in my village to continue the effort that I’ve spearheaded. He or she will then bring his or her own experiences from the states and build on the scaffolding I’ve erected in the minds of the students of Saliev School. If the Peace Corps continues to smile upon Darkan then volunteers should keep coming year after year until the educational system of Saliev School is less Soviet and more Soviet-Kyrgyz-American. A big melting pot of countries. The above reasoning is what Sergeant Shriver, the founder of the Peace Corps, had in mind when he first started on the workings of a global development organization from his basement fourty-five years ago. The bare bulb in the flickering socket above the dusty brown desk scattered with papers.

The Peace Corps primary motto is: To foster the development people around the world.
Its secondary motto is: Baby Steps.

Like I said before the long rant about the Soviets: I’ve switched things up a bit this year. I’m teaching my own group of more motivated students while my host brother is taking the less motivated jocks. I know it sounds awful but me being here is a one time thing. I’m here for the next year and then I’m gone. Neither I nor my host brother want to see me waste my time teaching students who don’t want to learn English and will try their hardest not to. I’m taking the students, mostly girls and two or three boys per class, that will try to learn and I will work my hardest to try to make learning the English language fun for them. It’s a belief commonly held by all teachers to ‘teach to the lowest performing student in your class.’ That’s why there are Gifted classes and Special Ed classes; to increase the efficiency of student learning. If we wanted to take this last fact one step further we could teach to visual, auditory and tactile learners using mainly visual, auditory and tactile means. So I’m trying to increase my efficiency of teaching by ‘raising the bar’ so to say. I am also trying out a new teaching regimen this year. Last year I taught all the types of grammar from simple to moderately complex. This year I will concentrate on teaching real life activities and actions and teach grammar when it applies to the real life activities I am teaching at the time. The belief that I’m subscribing to is: students will learn the language best if they can apply and use it throughout their life. There’s one very large problem with this. It may work excellently in the classroom but after those forty-five minutes of the day what will the student do with the rest of their educational and home time? No one in the school or Darkan speaks English so there is no demand for it and no outlet to use it. There are so few opportunities to speak English in Kyrgyzstan, much less Darkan. In Karakol you have a few Americans and in Bishkek they are more plentiful, but in Darkan there is me. I’m the only one who speaks English in Darkan with the exception of maybe five other Kyrgyz people who speak it only to me. Back to the original question: How do I persuade the students to speak English on a semi-regular basis? Like the question of who wrote Beowulf, how slinkys work, or why tape is sticky; this question is a paradox. Plenty of resources and materials have come from America, I have excellent lessons and willing students, but without the outlet in Darkan for the students to use the English Language my teaching is limited. Yes, my teaching is limited but I am pushing the limit this year as hard as I can. I’m starting off the year with introductions, dialogues and hopefully this introductory introduction topic will culminate with the students’ parents coming to see my class and the students introducing their parents to me. Then we are learning the necessary question words and completing fun activities and games with them. Then we are learning how to buy something with dialogues, role plays and culminating in myself going to a dukon or convenience store, acting as the clerk and selling things to the kids. We will learn proper eating etiquette with myself and all the students sitting down to eat and them using what they’ve learned. That will hopefully take us into the sixth week if all goes well. I am also adopting a new idea this year: practice. Every so often the students will practice using their English speaking skills so that they don’t forget them. My ever present goal is to get the students speaking in English. If they are speaking then I have succeeded in my goal. I have fun, interesting and exiting things for the students to do this year. We will put on plays, sing songs using my computer, and participate in many dialogues and role plays. Will it work? Let’s hope so. If not I can say I tried and trying is better than doing nothing at all.